Brauchli knew salons off the record

Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli says he knew more about the controversial “salons” the paper had planned than previously has been reported, including the fact that they were being billed as “off-the-record” to potential sponsors.

Brauchli made the acknowledgement in a letter to Charles Pelton, the person hired by the Post to organize what was to have been a series of corporate-sponsored, off-the-record dinners at the home of publisher Katharine Weymouth. Pelton, who resigned from the paper in September, told the Post’s ombudsman the day that POLITICO reported on the salons that Brauchli and other editors had been involved in discussions of them and that the plans had “been well developed in the newsroom.”

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But the same day, Brauchli said he had been unaware of many of the details of the planned dinners, and that it had been his understanding that staffers present at them would be able to use what they learned for their reporting. He told POLITICO that Post reporters would “reserve the right to allow any information or ideas that emerge from an event to shape or inform our coverage.”

That appeared to contradict promotional materials sent to potential backers which billed the events as strictly off-the-record—in other words, no information gained could be used in the paper. Brauchli suggested that the editorial and business sides viewed the proposed events quite differently.

But in a Sept. 25 letter to Pelton, obtained by POLITICO, Brauchli said he “knew that the salon dinners were being promoted as ‘off the record.’ That fact was never hidden from me by you or anyone else.” And he also acknowledged that he had seen two slide shows on the dinners and received e-mailed copies of the promotional materials for them.

Presented as an “Underwriting Opportunity,” the flier promoting the dinners promised the chance to “participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth. ... Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama administration and congressional leaders."

In the wake of the controversy touched off by the proposed salons and the avalanche of criticism that landed on the paper, Brauchli and Weymouth appeared to be trying to distance the newsroom from the trouble. Pelton—who was listed as the contact on the flier – was the only casualty of the controversy.

However, POLITICO reported last month that the idea to hold salons in Weymouth’s home preceded Pelton’s arrival at the paper by several months, according to two sources who interviewed for the job in February. As one candidate told POLITICO, the Post’s strategy was to put on events “without much time commitment and [with a] high return on value.”

In a story about Pelton’s resignation last month, The New York Times reported that Brauchli believed he should have recognized the ethical issues raised by the salons, but that he had “not known all the details of how the dinners were being promoted, “ including that they were off-the-record and that he thought “those details significantly compounded the ethical problems.”

But Brauchli, in his letter, said he had always known that they were off-the-record, and that the reporter who wrote the story, Richard Perez-Pena “misunderstood me.”

“You and I discussed the off-the-record nature of the dinners,” Brauchli told Pelton. “The phrase was also used in marketing materials for the salons and in correspondence to the newsroom that you e-mailed to me.”

The existence of Brauchli’s letter was revealed Saturday in a “postscript” published in the Times on the same page it runs corrections. The Times did not state that its reporting was inaccurate, but noted that Brauchli “now says that he did indeed know that the dinners were being promoted as ‘off the record.’”

Brauchli would not comment on the letter. Post spokesperson Kris Coratti, in an email to POLITICO, wrote: “The letter speaks for itself."

According to Brauchli, he originally wanted the salons to be under “Chatham House Rule”, which he described as allowing for conservations to be “used for further reporting without identifying the speaker or the speaker's affiliation.” There is no mention of Chatham House Rule on the flier sent to potential sponsors.